Conflict Resolution

I have been struck by the degree to which bloggers and commenters all over the blogophere, who have been wavering or slightly less than completely uncompromising in their defence of free expression, have changed their tune quite markedly when presented with the original rationale for the JP publication in September.

ninme (inimitably) makes a principled point that the context should not even be needed, but I suspect that with the yawning chasm of misunderstanding between Muslims and, well, everyone else, context helps.

This is one of the foundations of conflict resolution. Where two parties are at loggerheads, the first thing you have to do is to get them to restate, clearly, the position of the OTHER SIDE. Before you can begin to resolve the differences, "A" must be able to recite, to the satisfaction of "B", the thinking of "B". In return "B" must recite the position of "A". Whilst each is concerned only with his OWN greivances and does not consider the offence he has himself caused, there is no hope of bridging the gap. This allows tit-for-tat recriminations to be removed from the issue and even for goodwill/trust to be engendered as each side can apologise for any trivial tit-for-tattage that is not core to their position. You quickly get down to the root cause issue and often find that that root cause issue may indeed be simply a misunderstanding.

Clear so far? Good.

Now let's examine this issue again, using the BBC boilerplate text:

Further demonstrations have been held in a number of Muslim countries, to condemn the publication of European newspapers of cartoons which depict the Prophet Mohammed. One of the cartoons shows the Prophet with a bomb-shaped turban. Muslim activists are organising a protest outside the Danish Embassy this afternoon. The cartoons first appeared in a Danish newspaper last year.

In this text, we have - for the sake of this analysis - two sides: I shall call the two sides "FoS&E" and "MF". There is a conflict between FoS&E and MF. One might so far as to suggest that there has been some tit-for-tattage. Actually there hasn't. There has been an awful lot of tittage - some of it pretty serious - but to the best of my knowledge close to bugger all tattage. Never mind. We'll let that pass.

It is extremely clear that FoS&E recognises MF's position: that these cartoons are insulting is reported everywhere, including the original article.

Does MF even tangientally recognise any part of the argument of FoS&E? No. Indeed, they continue to maintain that FoS&E acts entirely in bad faith. They focus entirely on their own grievances.

Until such time as MF begins to recognise that FoS&E has a legitimate position, FoS&E cannot assist in the process of reconciliation. FoS&E cannot come to the table and cannot trade anything in concessions whilst MF treats it with such contempt.

It is time for MF to understand FoS&E - NOT the other way round.